Semper Fi:
Dave, the Pope himself is NOT God as ANY Catholic will tell you. It is not the man that is Pope which is Holy… it is the office of the papacy which was established by Christ which is Holy. As for ‘Father’, we call him ‘father’ just as we would any priest. As for why Catholics and Orthodox call priests ‘father’, see the Biblical basis:
catholic.com/library/call_no_man_father.asp
By the way, the Christian Holidays also fall on/near Jewish holidays. Does this mean the Jewish holidays are ‘pagan’, too?
2 Thessalonians 2:15
Can’t argue with that
Did you even bother to read the links I posted. Obviously not or you would have read these things.
Christmas
*Since the celebration of Christmas has come to the world from the Roman Catholic Church, and has no authority but that of the Roman Catholic Church, let us examine the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition, published by that church. Under the heading “Christmas,” you will find:
“Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church . . . the first evidence of the feast is from Egypt.” “Pagan customs centering around the January calends gravitated to Christmas.”
And in the same encyclopedia, under the heading “Natal Day,” we find that the early Catholic father, Origen, acknowledged this truth: “. . . In the Scriptures, no one is recorded to have kept a feast or held a great banquet on his birthday. It is only sinners [like Pharaoh and Herod] who make great rejoicings over the day in which they were born into this world” (emphasis ours).
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1946 edition, has this: “Christmas (i.e., the Mass of Christ). . . . Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the church. . . .” It was not instituted by Christ or the apostles, or by Bible authority. It was picked up afterward from paganism.
The Encyclopedia Americana, 1944 edition, says: “Christmas. . . . It was, according to many authorities, not celebrated in the first centuries of the Christian church, as the Christian usage in general was to celebrate the death of remarkable persons rather than their birth. . . .” (The “Communion,” which is instituted by New Testament Bible authority, is a memorial of the death of Christ.) “. . . A feast was established in memory of this event [Christ’s birth] in the fourth century. In the fifth century the Western Church ordered it to be celebrated forever on the day of the old Roman feast of the birth of Sol, as no certain knowledge of the day of Christ’s birth existed.”*
bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.showResource/CT/HWA/k/464
Easter
*What is the meaning of the name “Easter”? You have been led to suppose the word means “resurrection of Christ.” For 1600 years the Western world has been taught that Christ rose from the dead on Sunday morning. But that is merely one of the fables the Apostle Paul warned readers of the New Testament to expect. The resurrection did not occur on Sunday!
The name “Easter,” which is merely the slightly changed English spelling of the name of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian goddess Ishtar, comes to us from old Teutonic mythology where it is known as Ostern. The Phoenician name of this goddess was Astarte, consort of Baal, the sun god, whose worship is denounced by the Almighty in the Bible as the most abominable of all pagan idolatry.
Look up the word “Easter” in Webster’s dictionary. You will find it clearly reveals the pagan origin of the name.
In the large five-volume Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, only six brief lines are given to the name “Easter,” because it occurs only once in the Bible—and that only in the Authorized King James translation. Says Hastings: “Easter, used in Authorized Version as the translation of ‘Pascha’ in Acts 12:4, ‘Intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.’ Revised Standard Version has substituted correctly ‘the Passover.’”*
bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.showResource/CT/HWA/k/465
Whoaaaa! Evangelizing the original Christians. That takes some serious… ummmm… nerve… or something.